- "He Too Must Obtain Meat For Himself And People, For They
Sometimes Suffered From Hunger." He Then Got Sulky, And His People
Refused To Sell Food Except At Extravagant Prices.
Knowing that we
had nothing to eat, they felt sure of starving us into compliance.
But two of our
Young men, having gone off at sunrise, shot a fine
water-buck, and down came the provision market to the lower figure;
they even became eager to sell, but our men were angry with them for
trying compulsion, and would not buy. Black greed had outwitted
itself, as happens often with white cupidity; and not only here did
the traits of Africans remind us of Anglo-Saxons elsewhere: the
notoriously ready world-wide disposition to take an unfair advantage
of a man's necessities shows that the same mean motives are pretty
widely diffused among all races. It may not be granted that the same
blood flows in all veins, or that all have descended from the same
stock; but the traveller has no doubt that, practically, the white
rogue and black are men and brothers.
Pangola is the child or vassal of Mpende. Sandia and Mpende are the
only independent chiefs from Kebrabasa to Zumbo, and belong to the
tribe Manganja. The country north of the mountains here in sight
from the Zambesi is called Senga, and its inhabitants Asenga, or
Basenga, but all appear to be of the same family as the rest of the
Manganja and Maravi. Formerly all the Manganja were united under the
government of their great chief, Undi, whose empire extended from
Lake Shirwa to the River Loangwa; but after Undi's death it fell to
pieces, and a large portion of it on the Zambesi was absorbed by
their powerful southern neighbours the Banyai. This has been the
inevitable fate of every African empire from time immemorial. A
chief of more than ordinary ability arises and, subduing all his less
powerful neighbours, founds a kingdom, which he governs more or less
wisely till he dies. His successor not having the talents of the
conqueror cannot retain the dominion, and some of the abler under-
chiefs set up for themselves, and, in a few years, the remembrance
only of the empire remains. This, which may be considered as the
normal state of African society, gives rise to frequent and
desolating wars, and the people long in vain for a power able to make
all dwell in peace. In this light, a European colony would be
considered by the natives as an inestimable boon to intertropical
Africa. Thousands of industrious natives would gladly settle round
it, and engage in that peaceful pursuit of agriculture and trade of
which they are so fond, and, undistracted by wars or rumours of wars,
might listen to the purifying and ennobling truths of the gospel of
Jesus Christ. The Manganja on the Zambesi, like their countrymen on
the Shire, are fond of agriculture; and, in addition to the usual
varieties of food, cultivate tobacco and cotton in quantities more
than equal to their wants.
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